Fall

With the cooler temperatures and the leaves beginning to change colors, it's time to learn about Fall!  The children enjoyed looking at the leaves and noticing all the different colors they were seeing in the trees.  They talked about why the leaves change colors and did many activities with leaves this week.

Making a beautiful leaf imprint!

Coloring leaves all the different colors they saw in a tree!

Cutting out leaves!

Counting out leaves to add to the branches of the tree

Of course, we have to have some fun with Scarecrows in the Fall!  The children made a scarecrow from all the different shapes they have learned about!

The letter of the week was "K".  The children made "K is for Kangaroo" as an art activity.  They also made their very own "Kicky Kangaroo Kabobs"! 

Cute!

Making a perfect Kabob!

 Now, we are ready for Fall! 

Down on the Farm

Last week, we learned all about the farm!  The children pretended to be several different farm animals and did a variety of activities as well.

Putting 10 cotton balls on the sheep
for our number of the week!

Having fun with her Duck Mask!

For a science experiment, the children turned whipping cream into butter to spread over bread.  During this process, they learned how cows help in making butter.

Shaking up the whipping cream to make some butter!

The cooking activity was "Pigs in a Blanket".  The children talked about pigs and learned how to make a classic, tasty treat!

Our letter for the week was "J".  The children did several projects to practice the letter "J" and came up with other words that also start with "J".

"J is for Jaguar"

10 Jelly Beans in a jar

 We also finally got to release our butterflies!  We have been watching them for several weeks as they went through the life cycle from caterpillar to butterfly.  The children had so much fun watching their butterflies flutter around on our playground and eventually fly out of sight!

Waving goodbye to the butterflies!

Weather

Since the weather is really beginning to change, we focused on weather this week.  The children learned about many different types of weather.  They made a weather dial to use as they check the weather outside and move the arrow to the correct area.

Pretty excited about coloring her weather dial!

After talking about snow, the 2 year olds had a "snowball fight"!

Looks like they had some fun with this!

 The children also took a look at the clouds in the sky during recess and imagined that the clouds were different objects.  While outside, they experimented with streamers to see when and which way the wind was blowing.

As the children made a weather mobile, they reviewed all of the different weather terms they had discussed throughout the week.  We may have some future meteorologists!

Tying the mobile together

The letter "I" created several fun activities as well!  Of course, we had to talk about Ice Cream!

"I is for Ice Cream"

The cooking activity this week reinforced the letter "I".  The children made Ice Cream Pudding Pie! YUM!

It must have been finger-licking good! :) 

Apples

Johnny Appleseed was a man who loved planting and growing apple trees.  He wanted to share his love of apples with others so that they could enjoy the tasty treats as well.  He spent his life planting apples across the United States.  In honor of his birthday on Monday, September 26th, we learned about apples this week!  The children tried to guess about how many seeds would be inside an apple.  Once the apple was cut open, they did an experiment to see how lemon juice keeps apples from turning brown so quickly.

There were so many fun art projects going on this week with apples!  Here's a few:

Creating a beautiful picture by doing apple stamping!

We can even make apples using our hand prints!

Practicing counting to our number of the week
by adding that many apples to their tree!

Such a cute interactive apple that the children
could move their worm through.

Creating an apple tree using cookie cutters!

 The 1 year olds did an apple hunt in their room and then counted how many apples they found.

 Towards the end of the week, the children made their very own mini apple pies!  They turned out to be pretty delicious!

Cutting out the crust of the apple pie

Adding the apple filling

Carefully putting on the top

YUMMY!

 We can't forget about our letter of the week- H!  The children made "H is for Hippo" as an art activity this week.  They also practiced writing the letter, making the sound, and some even used blocks during centers to make the letter H. 

Dinosaurs

Everyone had a blast this week with Dinosaurs!  It's so neat to think about what it was like so long ago!  The children did so many fun learning activities this week!
They made a Dinosaur glyph by decorating their dinosaurs based on their favorite color, which dinosaur was their favorite, and if they would like one as a pet!

He likes T-Rex and would like one as a pet!  YIKES!

The children also made many other dinosaurs this week.
The 3-5 year olds talked about dinosaur bones and made their very own dinosaur skeleton!

Very carefully working with toothpicks and glue to construct his skeleton.

Of course, a dinosaur theme requires a lot of imagining.  The children did such a great job of pretending this week!

Our Pre-K class played a game pretending to be and move like different dinosaurs. 
Some of them really got into acting like a dinosaur!

Looking for "Dinosaur Eggs" on the playground!

Practicing counting with the number of "Dinosaur Eggs" she found!

Pretending to be Paleontologists digging in the sand for bones and fossils!

Good digging guys!

 We also made fossils!  The children made the imprints on Friday so that we can let them dry and harden over the weekend.  Come by and try to guess what is imprinted in their fossils!

It was a little gooey!

Making his imprint in the fossil

 Our cooking activity this week, pulled together the dinosaur theme and the letter of the week.  The children enjoyed making "Gumdrop Cereal Dinosaurs" for the letter G!

To reinforce the letter of the week, the children made a goat! 

The 3 year olds also made a Groundhog!  You might have seen our furry friend in the parking lot as we see him just about every day now!  The teachers have talked about making him our mascot! Sunflower Station Groundhogs?!

Whew!  That's a lot to squeeze into one week!!

Butterflies

Wow!  It's been a busy week at Sunflower Station Preschool!  We are learning about butterflies and their life cycle.  We started the week out by putting caterpillars into cups so that we can watch the lifecycle as they turn into beautiful butterflies!  The children had so much fun with this and were amazed to see so many caterpillars!

Moving her caterpillar into her cup!

Watching carefully!

The children continued to observe the caterpillars
throughout the week as they got bigger and bigger!

 The one year olds made caterpillars and butterflies as their art project this week.

Nice work!

We also made our own caterpillars that turned into beautiful butterflies!

The children learned about symmetry this week as they painted butterflies.

 Our Pre-Kindergartners did a special activity to learn about the life cycle of a butterfly.  They created this neat representation by using different types of pasta!  They had so much fun with this and did a great job in learning all the stage of the cycle.

After reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", the children made Fruit Dip to eat with their fruit for snack.  The caterpillar learned that it was much better to eat fruit than junk food- let's hope the children did too!

Mixing it up!  Looking yummy!

Of course, the week wouldn't be complete without a letter of the week!  This week we focused on the letter "F" and the children's craft was F is for Fox!



Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to observe our caterpillars!  We can barely keep food in the containers for these hungry little caterpillars!